


pull me back from the dark

by ryyves



Category: Trollhunters (Cartoon)
Genre: M/M, Post-Season 2, Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-18 21:55:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13109265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryyves/pseuds/ryyves
Summary: When he returns from the Darklands, damaged and on edge, the first thing Jim Lake Jr. does is kiss Toby.





	pull me back from the dark

the clearing offers faint shade in the young day, dawn reaching its fingers across arcadia. the trolls linger at the edge of the shadows while the trollhunter walks, entranced, marveling, toward the sun. it waits to swallow him up, a hungry animal.

he spins around, the heavy weight of his armor pressing in on him, claustrophobic, and breathes. a boulder looms above him, half of its tip touching the sun, and jim scales its shady side. he is always climbing, it seems, reaching for something higher than himself. and here he stands, boy triumphant, somehow emergent from the long dark. he has done the impossible; he has spun the world to suit his needs; he has stared down death and returned.

and then, far below: toby’s face, framed in the light. jim steps forward and it burns him, as though he has become a creature of the night. he pulls back and stares for a long time at his armor-clad hand, imagining so hard that he can see his fingers turn to stone before him. he lets out a sharp gasp and staggers backward, bewildered, into the shade.

his hand is fine. he reaches up into the air, where the first sunbeams brush against his fingertips, and like this he trails his hand through the light. he touches the light with his eyes closed. he does not know how to become a part of it again. he breathes. he is alive. he is real. he is standing here before toby, and claire and the rest of his trollhunters. he can afford to waste a moment in the sun.

at length, he slides down the side of the boulder to toby, stumbling over stones. toby reaches out a single hand, and it is trembling. jim takes it, holds it close to his chest, closes his eyes. “tobes,” he says. how familiar that old term of endearment is, even now, after weeks of speaking to toby into the dark. and toby says, “jimbo,” just like that. just like that. like they are the same boys who parted ways, as though the air between them didn’t hold a dozen wrongdoings, all of them jim’s.

toby pulls jim into a tight embrace, his arms warm and familiar, and slowly, awkwardly, jim reciprocates. toby smells like home, like warm days riding their bikes for the thrill of it and stay-in weekends surrounded by domino’s pizza boxes in toby’s bedroom.

jim pulls back first. it is suffocating, this embrace, and jim can’t bear to suffocate again. he stays close, holding toby loosely, his eyes dipping to toby’s lips. the thrill of desire runs through him, of yearning, of a sudden want springing like a bird from his chest after weeks of crushing it down just to survive. just so it wouldn’t kill him.

but now, now he leans down and presses his lips to toby’s, soft, chaste, and toby’s lips move slowly against his own. he closes his eyes. he is okay. he is alive and in toby’s arms. and before he knows it he is kissing toby hard, one hand winding itself through toby’s hair, kissing him so intensely he feels he is burning up. he pauses, gasping, brushing his nose against toby’s in the space between kisses. it is the nicest thing he’s felt in -- well, maybe in his entire life.

he gives himself to it, and then, for a moment, he stops breathing. that’s when he panics.

suddenly he is again a beast of the night. he is as good as gunmar’s champion. (the decimaar blade held close to his face; unable to breathe, gasping, the terror of suffocation; the core of him being pulled out of him through his lungs, wrenched through his body, and agony everywhere.) he is terrified that touching toby will turn his best friend into a monster too.

I WANT TO GO BACK!

but he can’t. he is trapped here, killahead in ruins before him, and the day growing up all around him. toby’s hands on his cheeks. (toby in the darklands, hands on jim’s cheeks through his glowing bars, the first warm touch jim had felt in weeks; toby promising they would rescue him. and they had. oh, they had. but was it enough?)

oh, fuck.

it builds in his mind, while the light grows:

I WANT TO GO BACK!

jim flinches out of toby’s grip, staggering back, a burnt man seeking relief, gasping for air. he is always suffocating, now! bewildered by the light. and toby says, “okay, you need more time. i get that. you’ve been through a lot.”

but if jim lets this take him now, he’ll never recover. he steps forward. “no, toby, i-- i need you. i just-- it’s hard to be touched. everything-- just give me a second to recover.” a friend on the other side of his blade, begging for a fight to the death; gumm gumms marching, luminescent, beyond his cell, not seeing him; the nighttime silence, trying to sleep while the walls drip-drip-dripped down around him.

## I WANT TO GO BACK!

he pushes it all away. he can learn to hold the light inside of him again, starting here, his eyes closed, in the sun. he kisses toby without holding him, just one hand on his boyfriend’s cheek.  

“it’s good to be back,” he says. “here. home. it’s good to see you again.”


End file.
